AIBS National News

The Property Council of Australia with the support of the Residential Development Council took part in a forum with representatives from across the industry including our own Chair, Rod Fehring, to discuss a national, harmonised approach to universal design for residential housing.

The event organised by The Hon Bill Shorten, MP and Therese Rein brought together senior representatives from across the housing industry, disability access community groups and the Government to discuss ways to make universally designed homes more readily available and to educate the community about their benefits.

The participants at the meeting agreed that there was a clear need to codify a national approach to Universal Design.

It was agreed this approach would act to codify:

• The value of universal design to the community

• A definition and a set of principles of ‘universal design’

• What its features are in relation to housing

Further there was a commitment from industry to participate in a high-level working party to achieve substantial progress within six months.

The industry also agreed to work together with the disability access representatives to raise awareness, especially around education and training.

Finally, as an aspirational goal it was viewed that all new homes will be of agreed universal design standards by 2020, with interim targets and earlier completion dates to be determined for some standards.